Why does the 100LL price not drop with MOGAS?

kenjr

kenjr

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KenJr
Gas in my area has fallen to under $3.00 a gallon. I bought 87 today for $2.83 yet 100LL is still in the ~$5/gal range (self-serve) with the cheapest in my area being about $4.65...still almost $2 more per gallon.

I know the airports take a cut - probably a big one - per gallon, but in the almost 2 years I've been flying I've never seen the gas drop at the same rate as automobile gasoline.

JetA in my area seems to fluctuate more but is almost always $1 or so less per gallon that 100LL.

Kinda sad to think that we'll never see sub-$4 100LL again at this rate. Hopefully Shell and whoever else get the cheaper alternative going soon...
 
Each FBO sets its own pricing. When I had an FBO, we would price on the basis of our costs. We tried to make a gross profit of 25 cents to 40 cents on a gallon. A tanker load of Avgas was 8000 gallons and we had to pay the supplier within mere days. This would fix the price until that fuel was used up and we ordered a new load. Sometimes a load of fuel would last more than a month. Our supplier updated their prices on a daily basis. We did ours on a per load of fuel basis.

Most auto gas stations in competitive locations go thru a lot of gas and don't make much on each gallon. I would not be surprised if over a million gallons a year were typical. We struggled to sell 100,000 gallons of that on an annual basis. That amounts to $30,000 to $40,000 or so in gross margin, out of which we had to pay for the tank lease, truck lease, several employees salary, insurance, and fuel flow fees.

FBO's need to make a profit to stay in business and margins on Avgas are too slim unless you are pumping at least 500,000 gallons a year. Jet fuel, on the other hand is profitable. A typical Bonanza takes as much as 70 gallons, but most fill ups are for under 30 gallons, maybe $12.00 in gross profit. A Gulfstream 3 needing a fill up takes over 2400 gallons and a courtesy purchase for turbine equipment is 100 gallons or more. We made $1 per gallon on Jet Fuel, so the Gulfstream fill up generated $2400 for 15 minutes of labor.

Add to this, when price matters, as it does to most GA piston pilots, they will fly to a nearby County airport that loses money on each gallon and doesn't care. The airport commission is populated by local pilots who often have a say on hangar and fuel rates.
 
Unleaded is $1.62 per liter here. You guys suck. This thread is cruel and unusual punishment and should be moderated immediately.
 
Filled up the truck at 2.69 yesterday.

Ethanol Free MoGas is 3.39 on the street at my Fav station.

AvGas hasn't moved much here. 4.69 to 5.25 at the airports I typically frequent.
 
Last weekend, AVGAS was $5.85 at the county self serve. Mogas 87octane was $3.34.
AVGAS was as high as $6.20 this summer and Mogas was $3.90.

So it's coming down at about the same rate.
 
Though it hasn't been at the same rate, 100LL has fallen at my airport. It was 5.75 earlier this year and is now down to 5.20.
 
give it 6-8 months.....for the current supply to turn. Once fresh orders arrive....they will begin lowering the price.

I do remember a time when the delta between auto and 100LL was $1.....not no mo.:no:
 
The USA is the ONLY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD that still uses gallons, inches, pounds etc. Everyone else is on the metric system....
 
Checkout_my_Six said:
give it 6-8 months.....for the current supply to turn. Once fresh orders arrive....they will begin lowering the price.

I do remember a time when the delta between auto and 100LL was $1.....not no mo.:no:
Click to expand...

The election will be long over by then and gas prices will go back up.
 
coloradobluesky said:
The USA is the ONLY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD that still uses gallons, inches, pounds etc. Everyone else is on the metric system....
Click to expand...

Huh, Great Britain still uses Imperial Standard gallons, Miles, Whitworth, BSP, and BSB threads. I general I agree though, these antiquated standards are for the birds.
 
coloradobluesky said:
The USA is the ONLY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD that still uses gallons, inches, pounds etc. Everyone else is on the metric system....
Click to expand...
this is relevant...how? Oil is priced in barrels. Canadian cars get better mileage because their gallon is bigger. The price of tea in china doesn't matter because they have starbucks knockoffs now.
 
JHW said:
this is relevant...how? Oil is priced in barrels. Canadian cars get better mileage because their gallon is bigger. The price of tea in china doesn't matter because they have starbucks knockoffs now.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I loved Australia, in the States I only need 2 sets of tools, in Aus I needed 3.:rofl: I remember running into a bunch of leaks on one project, they had tapped fittings NPT to take BSP nipples.:rofl::nonod::rofl:
 
coloradobluesky said:
The USA is the ONLY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD that still uses gallons, inches, pounds etc. Everyone else is on the metric system....
Click to expand...

I remember when we "converted" to the metric system back in the late 70's. Any gas station that installed new pumps and sold gas by the liter watched as everyone bought gas across the street where the pumps still read gallons. For awhile there were dual metered pumps that read both liters and gallons then eventually all of them disappeared along with the metric road signs.

They tried to sell it but nobody was buying.
 
Silvaire said:
I remember when we "converted" to the metric system back in the late 70's. Any gas station that installed new pumps and sold gas by the liter watched as everyone bought gas across the street where the pumps still read gallons. For awhile there were dual metered pumps that read both liters and gallons then eventually all of them disappeared along with the metric road signs.

They tried to sell it but nobody was buying.
Click to expand...

Best I recall it was only Shell that did the conversion being a Dutch company and all.
 
John Collins said:
A tanker load of Avgas was 8000 gallons and we had to pay the supplier within mere days. This would fix the price until that fuel was used up and we ordered a new load. Sometimes a load of fuel would last more than a month. Our supplier updated their prices on a daily basis. We did ours on a per load of fuel basis.
Click to expand...

That makes sense.

So, if an FBO's supply of 100LL lasts a month, then we should expect fuel prices to lag the price of oil by at least a month?
 
kenjr said:
Hopefully Shell and whoever else get the cheaper alternative going soon...
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:rofl::rofl::rofl:
They'll find an alternative to leaded gas, but it ain't going to be cheap. And I doubt if it will be soon.
 
Ah yes. Liberia is on the English system still. Well THAT is certainly comforting. We started converting in the late 70's but for some reason the politicians gave up (its gonna take a government madate to do it, that one is painful I agree).

It is a pain to convert. Hard process, but it CAN be done.

No one wants to do it anymore. That leaves the USA the ONLY ONE (yes England has converted). Is this really inovative?
 
coloradobluesky said:
Ah yes. Liberia is on the English system still. Well THAT is certainly comforting. We started converting in the late 70's but for some reason the politicians gave up (its gonna take a government madate to do it, that one is painful I agree).

It is a pain to convert. Hard process, but it CAN be done.

No one wants to do it anymore. That leaves the USA the ONLY ONE (yes England has converted). Is this really inovative?
Click to expand...
who cares ? It works. Except for crashing one mars lander I can't see any downside to dual units. As far as trade, most multinational corporations have already gone metric internally to the extent it makes sense. I work for an american tractor company that went metric in the 70's
 
JHW said:
who cares ? It works. Except for crashing one mars lander I can't see any downside to dual units. As far as trade, most multinational corporations have already gone metric internally to the extent it makes sense. I work for an american tractor company that went metric in the 70's
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And a crashed MD-11, a near-miss in a 767, and several accidental OD cases...
 
They tried converting to metric and it was resoundingly a failure in the US. About the only thing that went without a hitch was the conversion of hard liquor to ml. 750ml is close enough to a "fifth" that nobody really noticed.

Getting back on topic. The distribution and sales system for AVGAS is a much slower response to changes in crude pricing than gasoline. Your airport may end up with the same avgas delivery for a month and the suppliers have similar long stocks. Your average gas station response time is days.
 
With the pilot population. Decreasing and the hours flown decreasing,the demand is not there. Not enough money to be made. More research should be put into converting airplane engines to car gas. Took a while but the did it to boats.
 
Screw the Metric System, and nancy boy games like Soccer. This is AMERICA! :D
 
frfly172 said:
With the pilot population. Decreasing and the hours flown decreasing,the demand is not there. Not enough money to be made. More research should be put into converting airplane engines to car gas. Took a while but the did it to boats.
Click to expand...

Not all planes are certified to run on Mogas. For instance, the Lyc O360A4K is certified for Mogas, the AA5B airframe IS NOT. Will it run on Mogas? Sure. Is it LEGAL to use Mogas? No.
 
Anthony said:
Not all planes are certified to run on Mogas. For instance, the Lyc O360A4K is certified for Mogas, the AA5B airframe IS NOT. Will it run on Mogas? Sure. Is it LEGAL to use Mogas? No.
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Man Anthony, I wish there was a way to get an STC or convert ...:sad:
 
People stuck with 100LL will pay whatever the pushers want them to. Hard cheese.
As for the metric system, I was in elementary school in the 1970s and the reason the switch didn't happen was because elementary school teachers were not smart enough to understand the metric system. Soft cheese.
 
Anthony said:
Not all planes are certified to run on Mogas. For instance, the Lyc O360A4K is certified for Mogas, the AA5B airframe IS NOT. Will it run on Mogas? Sure. Is it LEGAL to use Mogas? No.
Click to expand...

I'm in the same boat with the Comanche. Engine is good to go on UL93E0, but the airframe is not. Which is a moot point anyway, because I can't find 93E0 anywhere. 91, yes, 93, not at all.
 
Even in Canada where they had much more rigid requirements for changing, there is still much resistance.

Amusingly, the brits made the jump to decimal currency without that much folderol.
 
The one thing that would make the metric whining thread perfect is the gripes about CDMA cellphones.

BTW, when I moved to America, I adopted to inches quickly, but I never came to like Farenheit. It is especially unpleasant to pilots because of the importance the water has for our lives in solid and liquid phases.
 
Anthony said:
Screw the Metric System, and nancy boy games like Soccer. This is AMERICA! :D
Click to expand...

I am a Mechanic for a large Airline and in our fleet we have 152 Airbus 319/320's

I do not have any metric tools in my rollaway at work.
 
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